Before They Were Stars: John Cena Wrestles Daniel Bryan on “WWE Velocity” in 2003

I apologize in advance because I know I’ve already done a “Before They Were Stars” feature on this, but even though I hate repeating myself, I feel I can make an exception in this case. Tonight, World Wrestling Entertainment will be presenting their annual Summerslam pay-per-view, which is headlined by Daniel Bryan wrestling John Cena for the WWE Title. To showcase how far both men have come, here’s footage of them wrestling each other in February 2003 in a four-minute match on the WWE B-show, Velocity. This is very early in Cena’s WWE career and you know he wouldn’t be caught dead in those yellow pants today. At the time, Bryan was going under his real name “Bryan Danielson” and this was a tryout match for him. Danielson had only been in the business for a few years and after spending the decade building up his reputation as one of the top wrestlers on the independent circuit, he was finally signed by WWE in 2009. Ten years later, both these guys are in the main event of one of the biggest WWE pay-per-views of the year.